Tsubaki wakes up to a series of beeps and the sound of hushed voices. The world swims in the disorienting pallor that follows a nightmare, and she squeezes her eyes closed again. Her mouth tastes sour as she bites lightly on her tongue to make sure she's not still dreaming, the rest of her body too heavy to move even an inch.
The prick of pain tells Tsubaki that she's awake, but she keeps her eyes closed. She's not sure what time it is, whether it's still today or tomorrow, which makes no sense to her at all. It's then that the beeps register with her, and she realizes she might be in a hospital. Her stomach constricts tight with dread-her parents won't visit her in a hospital.
Panic is too much to feel; she focuses on finding the last thing she remembers instead, and recoils when Masamune's face fills her vision. The beeps quicken in the background-there's a weight pulling down on her hand, it must be him, she tries to find her limbs, but her body is too heavy to run.
One of the voices grows louder; she knows it's Masamune, taunting her in the trampoline park's tunnel. She doesn't want to fight him, she tries to say, but he doesn't listen, calling her name over and over. Her eyes squeeze tighter. He wants her to open them, but then she'll see the shadows that no one else can see, or him-she's not sure which is worse. The right words might placate him, but she doesn't know what to say-he'd thought everything she told him was in pity when his sickness took hold.
Masamune's voice sounds right by her ear. "Tsubaki!"
Her eyes fly open. "Leave me alone!"
She's blinded by blue; Black Star's face creeps into her vision. Bewildered, she blinks, and then sees Maka standing behind Black Star with a murderous look on her face before her gaze slides to Tsubaki. For a long moment, there is nothing, but the sound of the beeping as she stares at the two of them and they back at her.
A door rattles open, and a man wearing a tattered lab coat ambles in. "Oh good, she's awake," he says, slamming the door shut and sending Tsubaki's thoughts scattering.
"What are you doing here?" Black Star rounds on the man. "She was sleeping!"
"One, this is my office, and secondly, considering we could hear you through the walls, I doubt your friend was sleeping." The man sweeps Black Star and Maka out of the way, but instead of looking at the machine Tsubaki is hooked up to, he casts a glance upwards. She follows his gaze, and sees her reflection looking down at her from the mirror mounted on the ceiling. The overstuffed room she's in is certainly not a hospital, and the bed she's lying on is not a bed, but two mismatched couches pushed together.
Maka draws closer to the man, staring up at the mirror as well. "Is it okay?"
"It looks like it, but this isn't an exact science," says the man.
"Science?" Black Star joins them underneath the mirror. "You're a doctor!"
"I do better with dead things."
While Black Star sputters, the not-doctor makes eye contact with Tsubaki for the first time since he came in the room. "Are you done carrying your brother?"
Tsubaki blinks, then stares harder at her reflection, but she sees only herself and the others in it. Masamune isn't there-in fact, she can't feel him anywhere, like she has for the past few months. A headache spikes in her temples, and she wonders if she could simply go back to sleep, and maybe then she'll understand things better.
"That's not something you need to answer." The man says after glancing at the machine. "Some rest might be the best treatment."
She shakes her head, even though she just wished she could get lost in a dream. "I don't want to sleep."
"Suit yourself," he says with a shrug. "I'm not an actual doctor anyways."
He turns, glancing at Maka. "I'll give you some time, but-"
She interrupts him. "I know."
"All right." He casts another look at Tsubaki. "Don't push yourself too much."
Mercifully, he doesn't let the door slam this time.
Maka perches on the edge of one of the couches after the man leaves. "How are you feeling?"
"I don't know." Shaking her head makes Tsubaki feel like her brain is going to fall out of her ears. She stares down at her lap until the world stops spinning a bit. "What happened?"
Maka's expression turns cautious. "What do you remember?"
"Nothing, I-" She pauses, and looks back at Maka. Tsubaki had seen her after the trampoline park, but she had been with a white-haired boy, and they had all been in the dark. There'd been someone else there, she had gone with him, he had been the one who brought her there.
"Masamune," she whispers.
The memory feels more like a dream. She'd been cold, floating in the dark; she can't remember much more than that, but she remembers what he'd called her in the end.
Something beautiful.
She doesn't know she's crying until Black Star reaches over and wipes the tear running down her face. The breath she lets out is more like a sob, but her pain doesn't feel like something she has to hide anymore.
Are you ready to stop carrying your brother?
Tsubaki takes Black Star's hand, and looks up to Maka. "Tell me everything."
Azusa's office is small, wedged between Marie and Stein's, though Maka can see that she's largely taken over Stein's space. Although the filing cabinets taking up most of the area in both her and Stein's offices are overflowing, her desk is as precise and orderly as her appearance.
The only thing on her desk right now is the scythe Stein made her, sitting innocently in its cube form. Next to Maka, Stein leans back in his chair, casually examining the ceiling tiles. He doesn't seem concerned about Azusa's tirade, though Marie, who stands beside the desk, does.
"It is completely irresponsible to make a weapon for a reaper without a bond," she says, chair scraping back as she stands, evidently too angry to stay sitting. "Let alone without our team's approval."
"I did submit for approval last week," Stein says easily, finally sitting up. "I believe it was filed under technology designed to augment reaper performance."
Maka thinks she sees a vein throb in Azusa's temple. "That was for current reapers, and you know it."
"Which is what I still consider Maka," replies Stein.
At that, Maka looks up in astonishment. She'd never considered why Stein helped her these past weeks, other than to use her as a guinea pig for his experiments, and perhaps a buried soft spot for being Spirit's daughter.
"We are at a poor time to deprive the DWMA of a reaper, particularly given what Maka has just shared with us," Stein continues. "There has been a clear storm brewing on our doorstep."
"Which is why we should have been told." Marie speaks for the first time since Maka told the three that her bond with Soul survived. Her tone is more conciliatory than Azusa's, but there is an edge of hurt there, too.
"I found out about the threat yesterday," Maka says, fighting not to sound defensive. "I was planning on telling Stein, but then tonight happened."
"And what would you have done after that?" asks Azusa. "Continue hunting poltergeists and demons in your spare time?"
"I was trying to help." She tries not to cringe at the lie, but there's no doubt that telling the three that she's searching for Soul would have even Stein against her. "But I couldn't tell you that the bond was still there, with how you reacted after I closed the Rift."
"Demons have tried to infiltrate the DWMA before." Azusa steps to the side, pushing in her chair and crossing her arms. "We had to treat Soul's desertion as a threat based on that history and the fact that we don't know what happened to him before he met you."
Heat enters Maka's voice. "And the difference between Soul and a demon is that he isn't one."
"Why don't we look at the facts?" Marie interrupts before Azusa can answer, waiting until she gets a grudging nod from Azusa before speaking. "A creature that we've never encountered before crossed the Rift months ago and began wearing down the Rift with its blood," she says. She points to a map of a Rift hanging on a wall behind her. "Now, more Rift creatures and poltergeists have been crossing over everywhere, also infected with black blood."
"The Rift is growing thinner everywhere and we've had more poltergeists try to break into the DWMA, ones that are coherent enough to carry back information across the Rift," Marie continues. "What's more is that we've gotten reports from sister organizations telling us the same thing, and now the creature behind all of this breaks into Stein's lab and disappears without a trace before anyone can do anything."
"One that you are saying was directed by a witch," she finishes, looking to Maka.
She nods.
Marie glances at Stein. "How many probes have made it across the Rift?"
"One." He holds up a single finger. "And it was destroyed minutes after."
Maka sneaks a peek at Azusa while Marie speaks. "You're saying Soul should be our eyes on the other side." The anger on her face is mostly gone, but her tone is extremely reluctant.
"Do you see another option?" asks Stein.
There is a long silence.
"No," says Azusa finally. She points to the cube on her desk. "I saw what that scythe could do to Crona if I'd let you into the hallway." Her gaze flicks to Maka, then to Stein. "Could you engineer it to be stronger?"
Stein tilts his head to the side. "I could certainly try."
"Good, because we do need another reaper." Azusa's stare is razor-sharp. "Everything he tells you needs to be reported immediately," she says. "And there will be no more secrets."
"There won't be." Maka goes still and tries not to think of Blair's offer, so her guilt won't betray her. "I promise."
Medusa watches from the shadows as Cadme shifts out of her fox form and joins the other three witches gathered in the forest clearing. She waits while one of her snakes goes to ensure no other witch followed Cadme. These four witches had been young when the Rift was formed, easy to mold into her own faction within the coven, but it hadn't gone unnoticed by Mabaa in the narrow confines of their new home, or unmet with resistance, which was why Medusa had to pluck out her eye.
The other witches still revered the half-blind mad witch, though, so Medusa has to let the old witch keep her figurehead status and work from the shadows. It's what she prefers-there is more havoc that she can create from there.
A soft hiss announces her snake's return. The thrum of the soul still beating weakly inside the shadow as it climbs up to her arm tempts Medusa's hunger, but after millenia of slowly starving, it's easy to ignore.
Her mind flicks to the snake monitoring Soul while she puts things into place. When she was at the peak of her power, there was no place on Earth that she couldn't see through her snakes; now, it is impossible to see anything through them, but she trusts in the power of intimidation.
"Greetings, sisters." The witches jump as she enters the clearing. Cadme's hand goes to the bag at her side, where the fresh soul she caught bulges. None of them make eye contact with Medusa, fidgeting in place.
Titula, the youngest witch, speaks. "We heard about Arachne."
"Did you?" Her gaze slides across all of them; fear isn't something she minds in her followers, but it makes the mind idiotic. "What did you hear?"
"Nothing," says Cadme. She is more loyal than the rest, ever since Medusa kept her from plunging into the Rift when they were first exiled. "Do you want the soul I brought for you?"
"Is that what I said I want?" Medusa lets the annoyance show in her voice, and watches the fear work on the witches' faces.
"A witch told us you let out all of the souls Arachne had," says Rena, the eagle witch, rapidly. "That Crona led them and a bunch of beasts across the Rift."
"Ah." She lets the sound drag out, scrape across the clearing, and claw against their eardrums. "You think I've gone mad."
"No, that's not what we think at all," Cadme stammers. "We just thought-"
"That was your mistake, wasn't it?" On another occasion, she would have killed one of them as an example, but she needs them. "And yet, you still brought what I asked for, so I forgive you."
Cadme wavers for an instant, then darts forward to place the strap of her bag in Medusa's hand. The soul isn't more than a few days old; harvested in its core form, it will only last a day before rotting, but the potion she's making will keep it preserved.
"If I can ask," Titula says, unable to keep the hunger off her face, "what do you plan on using the soul for, sister?"
"You may." For a moment, Medusa reconsiders her decision to spare the witch. "It is an offering, of sorts."
"An offering?" questions Cadme, slightly bowed in respect.
"For the kishin soul among us."
"A kishin soul?" Rena repeats. "But Asura-"
Titula covers Rena's mouth with her hand. "Fool," she hisses. "You do not invoke his name here."
Medusa steps forward, and the witches fall silent. "This kishin is more pliable and much more powerful." She points to the Rift, to the crack widening across it. "He pulls Earth closer to our dimension when he sleeps."
Cadme lets out a soft gasp, eyes trailing to her bag. "Is he fully realized yet?"
"He will be soon enough." Medusa's finger traces the outline of the soul beating frantically on the outside of the bag. "And then he will bring the world back to us."
Medusa fetches the bag she stowed away before her meeting with Cadme, Titula, and Rena. Its contents sway back and forth as she walks down the path leading to Mabaa's lair. Arachne had been clever in how she preserved the kishin's body in a cocoon far from where after she sealed away its soul, but Medusa had been smarter. It had taken Crona only minutes to find the body.
It takes an annoyingly long time to settle Mabaa after the old witch spots Medusa, but the soul that Cadme brought helps placate her.
So does the sight of her stolen eye resting in the mouth of one of Medusa's snakes.
She explains her instructions twice, and lets the witch stroke her lost eye once, before Medusa leaves Mabaa with the kishin's body in the decaying hovel she calls home, spying the witch scrambling for her ingredients as she leaves. It's slightly bothersome to go to the old witch for help, but even she has to admit that no one mastered the art of weaving souls into bodies like Mabaa.
And a kishin isn't as powerful without a body, after all.
Soul escapes to the darkness almost nightly, where Maka waits for him. They talk, and he tells her what he sees, although it's not much. The crack in the Rift is growing, but nothing else has happened. It's been ages since Medusa left, and no other witches bother him. None of the monsters in Abeyance bother him either; they avoid him, hastening out of his way, although he caught a pair of foxlike eyes following him once.
Even when the conversation dries up into silence, he doesn't leave, spending the hours until Maka has to wake up floating in the darkness with her, making pretend constellations out of the thousands of invisible souls rushing across the boundary of life to death. He wonders if he could make that journey if he tried, although, deep down, he knows his soul is rooted to Abeyance.
He pays for the time he spends with Maka by waking up with a vicious hunger that leaves him curled on the ground, and brings the feeling when he attacked Medusa to the surface of his being, though the hunger never touches him when he's in the dark. But even though he knows the spikes in hunger aren't good, he can't bring himself to care much about it.
Soul focuses on other things, like getting rid of the snake following him, trying to ferret out the witches' plan, and going to see Maka.
But no matter how much he ignores the hunger and everything else, he can't ignore how it feels like he's running out of time.